The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
An automated driving system in an automated vehicle is capable of performing some driving functions, such as steering control, braking control, and navigation, without an intervention from a driver. During operation of such an automated vehicle, the driver and the vehicle may assume different responsibilities for driving the vehicle depending on road conditions. When road conditions change, responsibilities for driving the vehicle may be transferred from the driver to the vehicle or vice versa. Thus, there is a need for explicitly indicating driver's responsibilities to a driver in order to safely and comfortably drive an automated vehicle.
Traditionally, automated driving systems merely indicate a level of automated driving, e.g., “Level 3”. This approach does not indicate to a driver what responsibilities the driver does and does not have for each of the automated driving levels of an automated vehicle in an easy-to-understand centralized fashion.
Furthermore, in traditional HMI, system status, mode change requests, and warnings are often represented as unrelated (visually, spatially, and conceptually) icons that make it more difficult for the driver to process quickly and understand the vehicles expectations of the driver.
The U.S. Pat. No. 8,825,261 B1 patent provided a method for conveying status information to a passenger in an automated vehicle. In one example, a control computer can illuminate elements of the vehicle. The color and location of the illumination may indicate the status of the control computer, for example, whether the control computer has been armed, is ready to take control of the vehicle, or is currently controlling the vehicle.